My book-style dissertation, The Comparative Politics of Black Immigrant Political Assimilation, asks whether social assimilation is a pre-condition of Black immigrants’ political assimilation through a comparative case study of Black immigrant populations from anglophonic African and Caribbean countries to the United States, and United Kingdom. I utilize mixed-methods research methods including existing public opinion surveys, original survey experiments, ethnography, and in-depth interviewing, to consider the ways in which colonial legacies of hypo-descent and commonwealth citizenship affect contemporary Black immigrants’ political participation.

My larger research portfolio focuses on local-level responses to immigrant integration and these policies’ implications for immigrant socialization and political incorporation, with a second research focus on inter-group dynamics in American political behavior. My community-based research project, Autodeterminación: A Bay Area Case Study of Non-Citizen Political Incorporation, is a multi-year, extended case study of a Latina-founded, bilingual, multiracial, mixed-status and cross-class mutual aid community organization in California. This work has been supported by the Research, Action, and Impact through Strategic Engagement Doctoral Fellowship, which you can read more about here. I also have a working paper, No al Cous Cous: Immigrant Integration and Populist Food Policy in Italy, which considers Italian municipal bans on “ethnic food” in historic centers of famous Italian cities. I use a multi-method approach, including in-depth interviews and panel data analysis, to examine the extent to which these policies are implemented and enforced, which you can read more about here.

My co-authored works in progress include:

• Detroit Refugee Integration Survey, with Kathryn Hannum, David Laitin, Mara Ostfeld, Jeffry Morenoff & Paul Fontaine

• Racial Identity Over Politics? Exploring How Shared Black Identity Influences Black Democrats’ Attitudes Toward Black Republicans, with Lauren Davenport and Kasey Rhee

• Which Common Identities? Partisanship, Gender, and Race Reconsidered, with Lauren Davenport and Kasey Rhee